Coming Home: A ‘normal’ job after Disney

I’ve now been home almost 3 years. I now have a ‘normal’ job, in an office, working (vaguely) regular hours. I am not going to lie to you and say coming home is easy or that you will find what you want to do straight away but there are an awful lot of skills you pick up while on the program that are actually incredibly useful and you will find many other people do not have.

Smile through the pain

You will find many people like to complain about work but you have done 60 hour, 6 day weeks and had no choice but to smile through it. You’ve worked when you’ve been out far too late the night before and started far too early this morning. Being the perky one in the office is not a bad thing and you’ll be surprised how few people can pull this off.

Know how to talk to all kinds of people

You probably haven’t realised it, I didn’t, but on your program you spoke to literally thousands of different people. People from all walks of life, from all over the world. By doing this you learnt subtle nuances of language, conversation and body language when speaking to different cultures. In my ‘normal’ job I work with people from all over the world and you would be surprised how many people are clueless and get annoyed having challenging conversations with people who speak another language. You did it every day, you are basically an expert!

Manage your time

This may be more of an F&B thing but you did a job where you had at least 4 different competing priorities at the same time. You also had to ensure you got out on time to take part in your ‘evening activities’. You are basically the boss of time management, your to-do list will never be too long because you know exactly what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

Meeting new people

On your program new people showed up every few weeks and your style of work had to adapt to new managers as well. You are an expert at jumping straight in with new colleagues and making them feel right at home. You are also great at showing them the ropes as you probably trained tonnes of people and you knew how important getting training right was as it made sure they did it right and in the end made your life easier.

Confidence

I think of all the things most people pick up in Orlando it is this. I don’t think I can name one person who has done a program and not come back more confident in themselves. This might take a bit of a knock when you first get home but having taken yourself out of your comfort zone, travelled thousands of miles around the world and been forced to deal with many challenging guest and personal situations you are absolutely a more confident and more capable person and I reckon this is what make (ex-) Disney CRPs stand out from the crowd and go far in the long-term.